State of the Economy

[Falconeer]

They just posted this article about it, and I think it deserves its own thread as the economy in this game might turn around to be quite interesting, with the currency exchange between gold, real money and gems in place. I quoted the whole article below, but it's worth going to their page as there are charts and pictures.

John Smith on the State of the Guild Wars 2 Economy
by John Smith on September 14, 2012
  

I always keep a quote from Edward Coke around to remind me of the effect of informed individuals. Coke states, “Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.” With this aphorism in mind, let’s take a look at the current state of our economy.
Trading Post

Before I discuss the issues with the trading post, I want to point out to those who haven’t spent time with the trading post how great it is. The global trading and visible quantities gives you a sense of the massive scale of the game and economy.
That being said, the trading post had a rough start. As a fundamental piece of the game, we mobilized to get it fixed immediately. After about 100 hours of work in that first week our devs began to make some progress noticeable by the players. We’ve come a really long way in stabilizing the trading post and preparing it for the future and we’ll continue working on making the trading post a better experience.
Supply and Demand

We’ve noticed several markets that are clearly out of sync in terms of supply and demand. It isn’t interesting or fun to have a market flooded with items that contain very little value, so we’re making adjustments to the game every day. Players can expect to see these markets even out over time.
While adjusting the supply and demand will bring markets closer to non-vendor based equilibrium, there is still the matter of massive surplus of some items. To address the surplus, we’ve created some new, limited-time Mystic Forge recipes that use these items. These recipes create boxes that give chances for gold and some cool items.

Exploits

For those less familiar with this topic, exploits are errors in the game or third party programs that create opportunities for players to move outside the conventional means of gaining value (gold, experience, skills, etc.). The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.
For example, a player discovers a recipe that allows them to craft items from vendor goods for only 50 copper and then sell back the crafted item for 100 copper. The player now has an infinite loop of value gain. If this were working as intended the game’s currency would hyper-inflate very, very quickly as all players swarmed to this recipe to generate gold.
Exploits are a really interesting topic because they are, in the end, dangerous and self-defeating. The game has gotten to a point in size where there is no such thing as a single player discovering an exploit. Exploits come in waves of mass participation and in the end, if they aren’t dealt with, the economy becomes hyper-inflated. After mass exploitation, your wealth is only relative to how good you were at exploiting, rather than your success in the game. This damages the integrity of the game and makes it unfriendly to new and honest players. There have been cases where exploits have severely damaged and arguably killed a game.
Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.
To give some perspective on our actions against exploiters, let’s discuss the karma vendor exploit, where an item was priced at 21 karma instead of 35,000 karma. In this case, we made a mistake and many players got some awesome weapons for very cheap. Does a single player buying a weapon, to use, damage the game or really hurt the players? Not terribly, but getting cheap weapons for your characters wasn’t the problem. The problem was the 1.46 million weapons purchased by 4,862 players, which averages over 300 weapons per player. There is a fundamental difference here between players who got a cheap weapon and players who found a bug in the game and took advantage of it. The latter attempted to create wealth for themselves at the expense of the other millions of players that are injured by exploiting behavior.
Because Everyone Needs Data:

[Severian]

John Smith on the State of the Guild Wars 2 Economy
by John Smith on September 14, 2012
  
Because Everyone Needs Data:

Here's a larger version of that gender/profession/race/crafting graph.

[Falconeer]

I don't understand the races though. What's the dominating one?

[murdoc]

Going from left to right, I think it's Norn, Charr, Asura, Sylvari, human

[proudft]

Human is the popular one: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Race_icons

[Simond]

Which is ridiculous, because clearly Charr are the most 

[Rasix]

Their running animation is torture.

[01101010]

Their running animation is torture.

Yep.

[Abelian75]

Their running animation is torture.

Pretty much the sole reason all my characters aren't Charr.

[Furiously]

I need to make a jumping puzzle asura.

[Sjofn]

Put me in the "charr running animation sucks too hard" camp.

[Fordel]

That's a pretty decent spread on races really.

[Ingmar]

Their running animation is torture.

And they fit in as a good guy race almost as well as the Forsaken.

[Simond]

'Orc' works better, what with the whole "corrupt magic kicked out, race trying to make a home for itself" thing. And the running animation is brilliant - big puddy tat goes down on all fours and galumphs along.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Asura 

[PalmTrees]

'Orc' works better, what with the whole "corrupt magic kicked out, race trying to make a home for itself" thing. And the running animation is brilliant - big puddy tat goes down on all fours and galumphs along.

Galumphs, yeah that's the problematic bit. I'm sure they move the same speed as everyone else, but it looks so much slower and so much more labored. I made a charr engineer just to see their starting bit and that run animation was a big minus. Also, it would be nice to make a muzzle/teeth combo that was a bit more closed and didn't have teeth sticking out every which way.

[Sjofn]

The lady ones, you can shrink their teeth pretty damn far, so you might try making one of those. They still run stupid, though.

[Falconeer]

But Economy?

[Sjofn]

Economy is boring.

[rk47]

Yeah honestly fuck MMO economics.
This isn't a game for me to give a shit about economics. After not figuring out the 'fun' in crafting.

Also 20 seconds with Charr I just wondered aloud 'I hope my guy washes his hands before eating a meal. That's so fucking unhygienic!"

[Yegolev]

I think this derail injured my neck.

[Fordel]

Every MMO I've played other then EVE, doesn't have an economy.

It has developers desperately trying to delay the inevitable gold inflation/stockpiling with an abundance of sinks that ultimately never work if the game is even remotely long lasting. You run out of shit to buy but you keep making money forever because everything you kill/do gives you money.

Even EVE wrestles with the problem of infinite money, trying to decide if X tier of missions are paying out too much and junk.




The only thing interesting about that article, is they seem to have a butter sink 

[Zetor]

SWG sort of had an economy. It wasn't very good, but at least they tried! I had fun writing in-character advertisements for my shop that sold explosives/grenades/mines/fireworks ("Things That Go Boom!"), making round-trips around the universe to check on my competition, making deals with some of the bigwig resource miner conglomerates on the server to ensure I had the best quality minerals for some specific items, etc etc. I also had a (much more profitable) doctor business on the side, since everyone wanted buffs. High-qual avian meat prices were through the freaking roof, so I set up some deals with hunters to buff them for free in exchange for a steady avian meat supply.

Ugh, I just realized I wrote an entire paragraph about SWG that makes it look like it may have been a good game at one point. I apologize.

[Maledict]

An economy that has constant inflation is still an economy? It may not be a great one,but every MMO I've played has some form of economy.

The interaction between gems and gold is certainly interesting - whilst inflation is absolutely happening, it's happening at a much slower rate than other games for various reasons. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[Murgos]

Every MMO I've played other then EVE, doesn't have an economy.

The ability to place buy and sell orders across the entire population does make it a 'real' market though (it would be nice if they added some of Eve's market metrics though, a graph of 30 day sales history would help A LOT for stability).  And since it is tied to real money I would guess that it also qualifies as a real economy.

[Falconeer]

It's one of the few games that has one Auction House for all servers, one of the few games that gives players the chance to place buy orders, and one of the few games that has its in-game currency value to the dollar (gems) tracked in real time by the game engine. It's not EVE but it's more interesting than any other DIKU Economy. I am actually surprised they don't show you real time price fluctuations for all articles, I wonder if it's a database-heavy feature they didn't want to risk at launch. Not sure how it'll go but it seems pretty to me, worth playing with it more than in other game. The general, apparent, scarcity of gold and obvious sources of income as opposed to what's usual in other DIKUs makes it even more stimulating to me.
 

EDIT: Murgos said it better.

[March]

The only thing interesting about that article, is they seem to have a butter sink 

I was trying to think how I was going to work in "swimming in butter" but yours is better.

I really like how it works with puting an order in for a price plus selling at market or demand pricing... the interface and search capabilities are laughable... and the fact that you have to run to a *place* to get your items (other than cash items) is stupid... but on the whole, fixable over time.

What concerns me about the article is the focus on abundant items, and not scarce items... there are clearly some itemization gaps that are making crafting - unfun... and these should be (and are) apparent when you go to buy items to cover these gaps.  Not that I am advocating a full centrally run economy (otherwise, why not just vendors?)... but still, let's even look at what fell through the cracks between beta and launch.

[Fordel]

An economy that has constant inflation is still an economy? It may not be a great one,but every MMO I've played has some form of economy.

The interaction between gems and gold is certainly interesting - whilst inflation is absolutely happening, it's happening at a much slower rate than other games for various reasons. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

It's not happening any slower at all.

Once upon a time 100 gold was a LOT of money in WoW.

A 1000 gold was almost unheard of for the first like 6 months, it was reserved for poopsockers and people who gouged poopsockers for potions.   

[Ingmar]

Not that I am advocating a full centrally run economy

I am! Rise up brothers and sisters of the moletariat!

[Furiously]

They just patched a few of the skill points which had been bugged. It was amazing to see the market explode as people sold the exotics that dropped.

[sachiel]

They just patched a few of the skill points which had been bugged. It was amazing to see the market explode as people sold the exotics that dropped.

ECTOS!

What pissed me off was completing Cursed Shore this morning and getting two level 76 exotics.  76!  One was nice zerker cloth shoulders that I WOULD HAVE LIKED if they were 80.  :arghfist:

[Shatter]

They just patched a few of the skill points which had been bugged. It was amazing to see the market explode as people sold the exotics that dropped.

ECTOS!

What pissed me off was completing Cursed Shore this morning and getting two level 76 exotics.  76!  One was nice zerker cloth shoulders that I WOULD HAVE LIKED if they were 80.  :arghfist:

Having Diablo 3 flashbacks

[Falconeer]

can anybody run a check for me in real time? How much silver do you get for 10 gems right now?
And how many gems do you get for 10 silver?
I mean on a NA server.

Thanks.

EDIT: Nevermind. I just tried to keep track of fluctuations, and apparently the price adjusts iteself every ten seconds or so. I just witnessed the value of 100 gems peaking at 29 silver and 32 copper, only to drop down to 28 silver and 70 coppers in a matter of minutes. Fascinating. (Bottom line: I should have sold my gems 5 minutes ago).

[kildorn]

They just patched a few of the skill points which had been bugged. It was amazing to see the market explode as people sold the exotics that dropped.

ECTOS!

What pissed me off was completing Cursed Shore this morning and getting two level 76 exotics.  76!  One was nice zerker cloth shoulders that I WOULD HAVE LIKED if they were 80.  :arghfist:

Cursed Shore is the 75ish zone, isn't it? There are three zones in Orr, and only the last one is pure 80.

[Miasma]

Cursed Shore is the pure 80.  I only got 75 ish stuff too.  But I did get 40 of the rarest cloth which sold for almost 4g.